Chapter 19
"All right, I'll give him a call. But Ms. Kendall, you owe me dinner."
"Absolutely."
Evelyn hung up. Half the weight on her chest lifted.
The other half wouldn't come off until she was actually sitting across from Mr. King.
Three days later.
The meeting was at the client's office in a seven-story building on the south side of the city. Dark red paint peeling off the exterior walls.
Evelyn arrived twenty minutes early.
The secretary led her to a small conference room on the third floor. No tea on the table, no snacks. Hard chairs.
Evelyn opened her laptop and closed the PowerPoint.
All she had in front of her was a printed investment timeline and a hand-drawn brand placement map.
At exactly nine o'clock, Mr. King pushed the door open.
Early fifties, buzz cut, black-rimmed glasses, wearing a faded plaid shirt. He walked in without shaking her hand and sat straight down in the chair across from her.
He glanced at the materials on the table, then looked at Evelyn.
"You're the Ms. Kendall that Harrison told me about?"
"That's right."
"Go ahead. You've got fifteen minutes."
Evelyn stood and slid the hand-drawn brand placement map in front of Mr. King.
She didn't start with the project positioning. She didn't start with market analysis.
She started with money.
"Mr. King, the Pine Hill project has twelve acres of built space, eight acres leasable. Based on current market rates, if you run this as a conventional commercial property, at full occupancy you're looking at around twenty-four million a year in rental income. But after operating costs and vacancy losses, actual take-home won't exceed sixteen million."
Mr. King didn't say anything.
"My proposal divides the eight acres into three zones: cultural experience takes forty percent, traffic-driving retail takes thirty-five percent, lifestyle support takes twenty-five percent. The cultural experience zone brings in local cultural IP studios and exhibition spaces. Free rent for the first eighteen months to cultivate them, but the incoming brands cover their own content operating costs."
Mr. King's eyebrow twitched.
"Eighteen months rent-free? You trying to drain my cash flow dry?"
"No." Evelyn flipped the investment timeline to the second page and pointed to a row of numbers. "While the cultural experience zone is rent-free, brands in the traffic-driving retail zone start moving in by month three. The rent premium from the retail zone covers the shortfall in the experience zone for the first eighteen months. I've run the numbers—the project's overall cash flow turns positive at month fourteen."
She spread out the calculation sheet, using her pen tip to walk through the key data points one by one.
Mr. King didn't interrupt.
His glasses had slipped halfway down his nose. He didn't push them back up. His attention was fully on the sheet.
Evelyn spoke for fifteen minutes.
Mr. King didn't say a word.
When she finished, Evelyn sat down and waited for his reaction.
Silence for about half a minute. Mr. King reached up and pushed his glasses back into place, picked up the investment timeline, and flipped through it from the beginning.
He set down the timeline.
"You've done projects like this before?"
"I have. Ashford Group's Eastside tourism project. From initial positioning to full tenant placement—a year and a half, ninety-two percent occupancy rate."
Mr. King made a sound of acknowledgment and tapped his fingers on the table three times.
"Leave the proposal. I'll have our finance team go through the calculation model. If the numbers hold up, we'll sign a letter of intent next week."
Evelyn didn't show any excessive excitement. She nodded once and organized the materials, leaving them on the table.
"Sounds good. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out anytime."
As she stood and left the conference room, she heard Mr. King call out to his secretary behind her.
"Look up the data on the Eastside tourism project."
Three days later.
Mr. King's secretary called and asked Evelyn to come to the client's office to sign the letter of intent.
The moment she finished signing, Evelyn capped the pen and set it back on the table.
She shook hands with Mr. King, walked out, and called a car back to Parker Group Tower.
The elevator doors opened on the thirty-sixth floor at exactly three in the afternoon.
A few people in the office area glanced up at her, then looked back down.
Evelyn walked to Luna's office. The door was open.
Luna was on the phone. When she saw Evelyn, she said, "I'll call you back," and hung up.
Evelyn placed the signed letter of intent on Luna's desk.
Luna looked down at the signature and company seal on the document.
Mr. King's signature. The client's official seal.
Her fingers paused at the edge of the paper.
Evelyn didn't wait for her reaction. She turned and walked out.
When she got back to her desk, a young woman from the team next to hers leaned over and glanced at her. The same one who'd been gossiping in the cafeteria before.
The woman opened her mouth, didn't say anything, and pulled back.
Evelyn sat down, opened her computer, and started organizing the implementation plan for the next phase.
Her phone buzzed.
She glanced down at the screen.
A text message. Unknown number.
[Evelyn, living pretty comfortably at Parker Group, huh? Don't forget how your mom died. A homewrecker's daughter—doesn't matter where you go, you'll never wash that stain off.]
Evelyn stared at the line of text on the screen. Her fingers on the keyboard stopped moving.
Around the office, people were discussing proposals, taking phone calls. The noise filtered through the cubicle dividers.
Evelyn pressed the screen dark and set the phone face-down on her desk.
Her back against the chair, she sat completely still for about ten seconds.
Then she picked up the phone, unlocked it, long-pressed the message, took a screenshot, and saved it to an encrypted album.
There were already two screenshots in the album. One was the anonymous message Mr. Larry had received. One was the lab report from the bar incident.
The third one was now filed away.
Evelyn set her phone on the desk and closed the text notification pop-up on the screen.
She didn't reply right away. She didn't delete it either.
She opened her phone's notes app and created a new entry. At the top, she typed three words: Investigation List.
First line: People who know about the "mother was a mistress" rumor.
She started listing names.
Sebastian.
Arianna.
Allen, the Ashford estate butler.
Jenny, the housekeeper who'd been replaced.
A handful of old acquaintances in their social circle—no more than five people.
Evelyn paused.
That night by the pool, when Arianna said those things, her phrasing hadn't been secondhand gossip. It wasn't "I heard your mom was..." It was "Everyone knows your mom was..." Someone who'd only been married into the Ashford family for four years, speaking with such certainty about events from thirty years ago—her source couldn't have been just street gossip.
Either she'd dug through old records, or someone had specifically fed her the information.
Evelyn drew a circle next to Arianna's name.
Second line: People who could pinpoint her phone number.
Evelyn had changed her number after moving out of the Ashford house. She'd only given the new number to Sophie, Cedric's assistant, Mr. Harrison, and Parker Group's HR department.
Sebastian didn't know her new number.
But Sebastian could find it through other channels. His company's HR system probably still had her old records. He could have someone trace it through the carrier to find the new one.